In many situations, the custody of sales merchandise is entrusted to authorized persons who should be held accountable for the merchandise and the proceeds from sales. One example involves airline onboard sales of duty-free items, beverages such as liquor, and headsets for inflight entertainment. There has been an airline industry problem in recording sales transactions from onboard sales of duty-free items, liquor, and headsets. In fact, the sale of these items onboard airlines represents one of the few instances today where merchandise is sold and cash is received from point-of-sale transactions without any accounting controls. Because of the lack of accurate controls, shrinkage occurs in merchandise and revenue from such sales. Most duty-free items are expensive, and this increases the temptation for dishonesty. If a system were available to ensure security for onboard sales of duty-free items, sales of such items could be greatly increased and produce a new profit center for the airlines. The onboard sale of liquor to passengers produces substantial revenue for the airlines, but such sales annually cost the airlines millions of dollars in lost merchandise and revenue because of difficulties in controlling inventory and accounting for cash receipts. It has been estimated that some airlines each lose several millions of dollars annually because of unrecovered cash receipts from the sales of headsets alone.
Thus, there is a need to develop a system of controls over merchandise and proceeds from sales to airline passengers. The system of controls should be convenient and easy to use by flight attendants at the point of sale and during other steps in the process of handling inventory and producing accounting records. The system also should accurately provide the necessary audit trail for merchandise and payments involved for all transactions so as to effectively prevent shrinkage of merchandise and revenues. Such a transaction monitoring and security system can, if properly implemented, also produce substantial revenue increases for the airlines not only because of the increased security, but also by encouraging greater onboard sales of merchandise. The airlines would be more agreeable to increasing the goods available for sale onboard the aircraft if security were improved, and passengers would find it more convenient to purchase goods through inflight credit card transactions made available by such a system.